


Savage Mountain

by Tarlan



Category: K2: The Ultimate High (1991), Vertical Limit (2000)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-09
Updated: 2009-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On his descent of K2 after an aborted summit attempt following a previous success with Harold, Taylor answers the distress call given from Elliot Vaughn's summit team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Savage Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crossover with Nicholas Lea as Tom McLaren and Michael Biehn as Taylor Brooks.  
> This story rewrites the ending of Vertical Limit and puts both films into the same time frame even though they were filmed a decade apart! In other words, there's a huge splash of artistic license in this story, but that's what fan fiction is all about! :-)

  
With thanks to Teamane for the lovely cover

 

"Are you gonna kill me now?"

"Yes."

Tom was suffocating, desperately trying to draw breath into his weakened body down a throat that felt like it had been stripped raw. He could feel the fluid building in his chest and he knew he was slowly drowning in his own body fluids as pulmonary edema set in. He watched, terror-filled, as Vaughn approached him with a hypodermic syringe, unable to fight him off as Vaughn tried to plunge the needle into the side of his neck, filling his veins with lethal bubbles of air while clamping a hand over his mouth to silence his cries. The pressure lifted and he was floating, the pain easing as he was lifted high above his own body, the pain easing in his chest.

Am I dead? Yes... Yes, I must be dead.

As his thoughts drifted onwards, hazy and without direction, he could hear Annie's shouts of anger and despair. Darkness beckoned rather than the light that he'd come to expect from reports of near-death experiences but he fell into it willingly, into a warm cocoon where he no longer felt the terrible cold and the heaviness of his laboring chest. A murmur of unearthly voices sang above him, floating down from high above into his sanctuary; voices filled with urgency but Tom drifted instead on a sea of tranquility until the darkness receded and the sun shone down on him from above, bright and warm as it caressed his face; he frowned as a shadow passed across it, blocking out the light and its heat for a moment.

"Tom. Tom. Open your eyes."

The voice was soft and caring, tinged with concern. It was so hard to obey though, his eyelids too heavy.

"That's it. Open your eyes," the soft voice murmured again, and Tom stared up at a face hidden in shadow, seeing only a corona of golden hair forming a halo around the man's head.

Light fell upon one side of the man's face, illuminating an eye of the softest green and gold and a gentle smile lifting at the corners on a raw and whiskered face.

"There you are," the man spoke again and Tom was sure he knew that voice, was certain they'd met before. He tried to reach up to touch the face and felt warm hands capture his. He moaned weakly as slightly tepid water trickled into his parched throat. "We're gonna try and get you out of here."

Out of where? He thought when no memories surfaced. The man pulled on Tom's clothing to seal him into a cocoon, and Tom drifted back in to the quiet world where he no longer felt the cold and pain from his broken body.

Sharp pain brought him back to consciousness and he cried out feebly as he was jostled and dragged away from the small alcove in the ice. More pain followed as his weight hung on a harness of rope, bringing back the discomfort in his chest. He began to feel the cold again, the chilling wind cutting through him as he broke the surface of the ice cave into which they had all fallen so long ago. He was lying horizontal again, staring up into a clouded sky, thick with snow waiting to fall. He could see the vague shapes of other people, could see them form a huddle a few feet away but he couldn't make out their words, snatched away by the chilling wind that swept across. Darkness closed around him as his face was covered, and he let the cold numb him into unconsciousness as was slowly dragged across the ice and snow.

***

Taylor stopped for a breather, his lungs burning from the strain of pulling the not-quite dead weight of Tom McLaren, bringing back sharp memories of the last time he had hauled someone down the mountain.

A full year before, he had reached the summit with Harold and nearly lost his best friend to the savage mountain on the descent. That moment had been a turning point, having to make the hardest decision of abandoning his friend to save his own life, or die together. With no rope or equipment, Harold had forced Taylor to leave, begging him to take a message to his wife and baby son; the tears had almost frozen on Taylor's face as he turned away. Sheer luck had sent him stumbling past where Dallas had sat down in the ice and frozen to death, still clutching his equipment and the coiled stretch of rope that could save Harold. Even though it was foolish and more likely to kill them both, Taylor had taken the equipment and turned back for Harold. Taylor's luck had held and they had both made it off the mountain but the break in Harold's leg meant he would never have the strength to climb anything like K2 ever again.

Successfully reaching the summit of K2 brought its own rewards and Elliot Vaughn had approached him earlier in the year asking him to join his team for this climbing season. Though the financial arrangement had been tempting, Taylor had long had his doubts about Vaughn after the entrepreneur came down the mountain as the sole survivor of an expedition several years back. Having survived the mountain himself, some of what Vaughn stated then certainly didn't ring true now, throwing greater credence on Montgomery Wick's claim that Vaughn had murdered his own team for their Dexamethasone and oxygen.

Or perhaps Taylor simply recognized Vaughn as a fellow shark in the water.

Before his ascent of K2 with Harold, Taylor would have had no qualms at all about abandoning a fellow climber, and he knew he could leave someone to die given *no* choice because he had left Harold. He knew he could cut the rope and let another climber fall to their death if there was no way for both of them to survive, but then, he knew he could cut the rope and fall to his own death if he was the dead weight at the end of the line and about to take the others with him. Such things were part of the climber's unwritten guide for survival and yet there was a difference between saving oneself and saving oneself at the unnecessary expense of another. Taylor would never have murdered anyone just to save his own life. He would never have taken another climber's equipment, their medicine, or their clothing and left them to freeze to death on top of the mountain if there was even the remotest chance of finding a way to save them both.

When Taylor mentioned Vaughn's offer to Harold, he was surprised at the way Harold's eyes narrowed. Harold was one of those rare people who seemed to trust everyone and who liked everyone he came across, seeing the good in them rather than the bad. In fact, Taylor owed his life to Harold's innate ability to make friends; friends that came through when everything seemed lost, but Harold didn't trust Vaughn to put anyone before himself and that spoke volumes to Taylor.

He'd accepted another offer instead.

Taylor had been on his way back down the mountain with his team after a change in the weather had made any summit attempt suicidal. By rights he should have ignored the call and taken the ride on the helicopter back to base camp but he had always liked Tom McLaren. The man knew the mountain better than most and Taylor was convinced that it was only a matter of time before McLaren reached the summit. In fact, if McLaren had been available last climbing season then Philip would have snatched him up in preference to Taylor and Harold. Taking all this into account, Taylor couldn't believe that McLaren had pressed on for the summit regardless of the worsening conditions and he was convinced Vaughn must have had something to do with it. The man was too set on being at the summit at a particular time, for the inaugural flight of a new plane, and Taylor suspected that Vaughn had overruled McLaren in order to have that dream.

The next part would need all of their skills to lower McLaren down the twenty-foot drop to the next shelf. Jacki moved in very close and pulled the mouth cover away so she could speak with him.

"How do you want to handle this?"

"We'll send you and Annie down first to rig up a stabilizing line, and then Garrett and I will bear his weight for the drop."

She nodded and trudged back the few feet to the brother and sister, and Taylor couldn't help but admire her stamina for she was the only one from his team who had agreed to come with him. Without her offer he would have had to leave McLaren and the others to their fate. Perhaps she had her own reasons for coming along, a sort of penance for knowing she would have abandoned him and Harold last season in order to save Philip from altitude sickness had the helicopter not made one final sweep and found them.

When every misstep could prove fatal, Taylor and Garrett helped first Jacki and then Annie, and once they were safely down and the lines secured, he and Garrett moved to where they had left McLaren. Taylor pulled back the cover from McLaren's face and tapped his cheek gently to waken him a little.

"You okay, buddy?" The green eyes were glassy with pain, cold and shock but they focused on him. "We're going to lower you a good twenty feet by rope. It's going to be a little uncomfortable." He waited for McLaren to nod his understanding and then recovered his face to protect him from the ice cold and any shards of ice or snow dislodged when they lowered him. Although they had passed beneath the dead zone of 26,000 feet, where every breath was a struggle, they were still too high for a helicopter to reach them but Taylor made sure they were aiming for a small plateau around 20,000 feet that was wide enough and offered some protection from the strong winds buffering the helicopter. It wouldn't be able to land but it would be able to hover close enough to the snow-packed ground for them to lift McLaren on board.

As he and Garrett strained to lower McLaren, Taylor couldn't help but wish he and Jacki had made better time to the ice cave. Perhaps if he had been there then Wicks and Vaughn might have lived too but he got the impression that Vaughn had deserved his ending, falling to his death with Wicks when Wicks cut the rope above him to save the Garretts. From her protective stance over McLaren once they had taken him out of the ice cave, he knew there was a story waiting to be told but he would hear it when they were holed up for the night.

Garrett belayed the rope while Taylor descended and they all dropped into the shelter of the ledge to regain some strength before the next part of the descent, all of them aware that as many climbers died on the way down as going up. K2 wasn't named the _Savage Mountain_ for no reason.

***

The cover pulled back from across his face, letting in a feeble amount of light thrown out by a small lamp. He could hear the outside of the tent flapping in the strong wind, a familiar sound from so many climbs and adventures starting in his childhood. Tom had wanted to climb since he was a toddler, always eager to find a way to the top of whatever piece of furniture or nature was placed in front of him. He recalled one childhood story of nearly dying when he tried to climb a bookcase and had it topple. Sheer luck had saved him, the bookcase's fall broken by a strong coffee table and his small body falling into the small protected triangle between the two.

Over the years he'd reached the summit of more than a dozen mountains from Mount McKinley in Alaska to Everest in the Himalayas. K2 was to be his crowning glory for although not quite as high as Everest, the climb was far more difficult and carried a far higher death rate of one in four climbers lost to avalanches or falls into deep crevasses. It was the ultimate challenge and with Vaughn's money backing him, he'd hoped to follow in the footsteps of Brooks and Jameson who had made the summit last season with Claiborne's team. Admittedly, they'd almost lost their lives on the descent and were the only two survivors of the four-man summit team but their success had inspired him to go for it this year. Perhaps that was why he had allowed Vaughn to manipulate him into continuing the ascent when the weather started to close in. It was called Summit Fever though Tom had believed he was strong enough to resist that lure.

Ragged tousled blond hair shone in the lamp light and he was grateful when packs were placed behind his back to elevate him. Too weak to hold the cup steady, he was grateful for the hands that supported him as he sipped at the warm, thin broth until the cup was empty. At this high altitude, the body needed six liters of water to survive as dehydration was the real killer up here along with the low pressure that made breathing harder, leading to pulmonary and cerebral edema. He knew he was suffering from HAPE, had felt the fluid filling his lungs and stripping his throat raw. He barely felt the prick of the needle as he was injected with Dexamethasone.

"How far have we descended?" he asked softly, pushing back on an urge to cough and finally noticing the increased ease in his chest.

The man smiled. "I figure we're below 22,000 now."

"Out of the death zone," he murmured. Tom blinked and glanced across the tiny tent where three others were huddled together, sipping their broth. He knew Annie and was so glad to see her, recalling the way she had taken care of him in the ice cave while Vaughn's eyes had glinted with malicious intent. All of those rumors about Vaughn murdering his previous team so he could survive had come back to haunt him while trapped in the ice cave, and he had spent plenty of lucid moments anticipating when Vaughn would see him as the ultimate liability and kill him too. What confused him was that he couldn't see Vaughn now, and he didn't quite know the two fair-haired men and dark-haired woman who were huddled in here with him and Annie instead, though they all looked strangely familiar. He stared long and hard at the profile of the man who had been tending to him, suddenly seeing through the wind-chapped face and pale whiskers.

"Taylor Brooks."

The man turned to face him head on and his eyes crinkled in a smile. A half formed memory returned of Brooks and his team planning to head out a day behind Tom's team.

"Don't try to talk too much. Get some rest, Tom."

Tom nodded even though he seemed to have little but sleep since the accident. He shifted slightly and felt a twinge shoot up his broken leg, the cold still numbing most of the pain fortunately as they couldn't afford to give him morphine for the pain while his breathing was compromised. He guessed they had used climbing poles and torn up clothing to make a splint.

"How much further?"

Brooks tilted his head. "There's a large horizontal ice sheet around 20,000 feet. I figure a helicopter could reach there."

Tom nodded, already picturing the place in his head from his study of the mountain and last season's attempt. His eyes felt heavy and he let them droop, feeling so safe and protected by this small group of climbers. For the first time since the fall into the crevasse, he started to believe he might make it down the mountain alive.

****

The last two thousand feet were treacherous as they tried to maintain a good grip on the ice and watch for hidden crevasses that would send them plunging to their deaths. When they stopped for a breather, Taylor took a moment to reflect on Annie's story, of how she had woken in time to see Vaughn trying to silence Tom McLaren, an empty hypo in his hand. No doubt he'd planned to tell Annie that Tom had simply died in the night and under the terrible conditions they were barely surviving in, perhaps she would have believed him had she slept through the whole thing. Instead, she'd managed to stop him, adrenaline giving her the extra strength needed to push the weakened Vaughn aside and step between the murderous Vaughn and his already dying victim.

Annie had shook as she recalled how Vaughn had tried to convince her that he was doing Tom a favor and perhaps it must have seemed that way when her brother arrived with Wicks and she realized they didn't have the necessary equipment to save Tom as well. Both she and Vaughn had weakened themselves--and Tom--by using blood to make a marker on the surface above the crevasse so the small rescue party wouldn't miss them in the field of snow and ice.

He recalled her final chilling words. "I wonder if he would have attempted to kill me too if Peter hadn't been on the rescue party."

They'd been in communication so Vaughn couldn't afford for her not to answer her brother. While she lived, Peter Garrett would have kept climbing to rescue her and him along with her, but if she had died then Garrett might have given up and saved himself.

The ice sheet was only fifty below them now and with a gentle slope in their descent path. Taking just a fraction of the weight for balance and control, Taylor and Garrett let gravity work in their favor, dropping beside Tom in relief. Taylor made the call to base camp and then pulled the cover away from Tom's face.

"You doing okay?"

Tom nodded weakly and Taylor looked across to see Peter smiling, his arm wrapped around his sister while Jacki leaned in close on his other side. The sound of the helicopter drew Taylor's attention and he stood up, waving the helicopter over to their position. The blades whipped up the snow covering the ice, lowering visibility and Taylor insisted on getting Jacki and Annie into the helicopter first. A man leaned out the back and helped them clamber on-board before all three helped drag in Tom while Peter and Taylor lifted him. Moments later, he and Peter were flopping onto the bench seat in the back, side by side, the door shutting out the wind and cold air as the helicopter veered away for the final part of their descent down the mountain.

They had made it.

****

Nine months later in Monument Valley, Tom pulled up outside the outfitter's ranch that would be used as a base camp and grinned as Taylor stepped out with Peter, Annie, Jacki and Harold Jameson. The climb they had planned was practically for beginners but with both Tom and Harold weakened by injuries, no one seemed to mind. What was important was that they were here together, all alive and still driven by the urge to climb any mountain.

Taylor had admitted that K2 had changed him, that it had made him a better man, and Tom knew that the _Savage Mountain_ had changed him too. It had taken him to the brink of death and then given back not just his life but this incredible group of people to share that life.

It was more than enough.

END


End file.
